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I stood in front of her door for five minutes before I got the courage to turn the key in the lock and walk in.

My daughter had died just the week before and we were still in shock.

My wife was a wreck, she hadn’t left her bed in days, so the
responsibility fell to me to go up to Carol’s apartment and make sure
her stuff was OK.

Carol was a vivacious 25 year old, living in Boston, six hours from
us, when a drunk driver swerved into her lane that night and ended her
life.

It is some comfort to me that I know she died instantly and wasn’t in pain. Some, but not much.

A man doesn’t think about raising his kids to be productive, happy
adults only to have to bury them when they are tragically cut down in
their prime.

This is a fate much worse than death and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

I sat down on the couch we bought her at Ikea while she was in school and sobbed.

Everywhere I looked, I was reminded of my little girl.

When she last left this apartment, Carol had fully intended to
return to it in a few hours. The evidence of this was all around me:
clothes on the floor, an open window. There were some strawberries on
the counter that had gone bad, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw
them out.

I swallowed hard and walked into her bedroom. Her bed was messy and unmade. I sat down on the edge and put my head in my hands.

Normally, in times of hardship, I looked to God and asked him why
good people were meant to suffer, but I wasn’t interested in anything
he had to say to me right now.

I felt something hard underneath me. I reached under the covers,
expecting to find a hair dryer or curlers or something, but when I
pulled it out, I realized I was holding one of her sex toys.

I believe it was a dildo or a vibrator or something. I’m not really
sure, because I quickly stuffed it back down where I had found it.

My face was red, I don’t know if I’ve ever been that embarassed in my whole life.

I looked around, feeling guilty. It was silly, really and I laughed in spite of all my sadness.

Carol had a great sense of humor and I think she would have thought
it was funny too. We would have both shared an embarassed look and had
a good chuckle as we tried to pretend that it hadn’t just happened.

Maybe this was her way of trying to cheer me up? A message from
beyond the grave? It reminded me that while, to me, she would always be
my little girl, she was actually a fully-grown woman.

I sighed and stood up from the bed. I took a step over towards the
window and nearly fell on my ass as I felt my feet fly out from under
me.

As I gathered my bearings and looked around, I saw what had tripped me up: another dildo.

I tried my best to laugh it off as I kicked it under the bed with my
foot, where it came to a stop as it bumped into yet another dildo.

My wife is a very private woman, even with me, so I haven’t had much
experience with this sort of thing, but still, three dildos seemed like
a lot.

I looked under the bed and nearly had a heart attack.

There must have been 50 or 60 dildos there. They were all shapes,
sizes and colors too. There were little pink ones, shiny chrome ones
and a giant black one the size of my arm.

“What the hell did she need all those dildos for, anyway?” I wondered.

I was overcome with a sense of panic when I remembered my primary
objective in coming over there that day: my wife had asked me to
retrieve Carol’s baby blanket. The one, I was told, she kept in her
closet.

I eyed the closed doors with suspicion. Surely, there could be no more dildos in there, right?

With great trepidation, I took a deep breath and slowly pulled the handle.

No dildos! Just shoes and sweaters and blouses. As I reached up for
the blanket, which was lying on top of a box marked “CDs”, I breathed a
sigh of relief.

Carol was still my little girl, not some sex pervert. Maybe the
dildos weren’t even hers… though that thought only opened up a whole
new can of worms in my mind.

Best not to think about it at all.

The blanket seemed to be hooked onto a corner of the box. I gave it
a tug and as it came loose, I lost my balance yet again and fell on the
floor.

This was followed by a torrential downpour of dildos, as several of
the boxes at the top of the closet had been unlodged and their contents
came tumbling down upon me.

Dildo after dildo fell on my head for a good three minutes. There must have been seven hundred of them, easily.

Some were of the vibrating variety and when they fell, got jolted
into the “on” position. I then had to figure out how the heck to turn
them off.

As I fumbled with the vibrating dildos, it occured to me that I had
thought every father’s worst nightmare would be losing his adult
daughter in a tragic car accident, but I had been wrong.

Every father’s worst nightmare was actually losing his adult
daughter in a tragic car accident, then going to her apartment to check
on things and getting showered with sex toys and having to handle said
devices, which I am assuming had been inside her person at some point
in time.

Not to mention having to face the fact that your sweet little girl clearly had some sort of psychological disorder.

As I looked through her kitchen cabinets for some garbage bags, I
realized I had it wrong: God wasn’t cursing me. He couldn’t curse me
because he obviously didn’t exist.

I locked the apartment, which I had tidied up as best I could and hauled the trash bags full of dildos out to the dumpster.

As a final insult, Carol’s nosy landlady confronted me in the
parking lot as to who I was and why I was piling garbage bag upon
garbage bag in her dumpster.

That was a fun conversation; I’ll spare you the details. Needless to
say, it ended with the cops showing up and me having to produce
my identification and explain my situation to a skeptical audience.

Worst of all, it meant that my wife had to be called, leading to the
discovery of her dead daughter’s terrible secret. The one thing I
didn’t want her to find out about. Not ever, but especially not now.

I sat on the curb as the officer used my cell phone to confirm my
story with my wife. I heard him apologizing profusely over her cries.

He handed me back my phone, looking down at the ground as he muttered, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

The landlady was still pretty pissed off about her dumpster, but the cops said they’d handle it. So much for small miracles.

I drove back home to Delaware in silence, trying not to think too
hard about anything. I stopped on the New Jersey turnpike for some gas
and as I got out of my car, the cold night air felt good in my lungs.

I would have to take each day moment by moment and learn to savor the little things.

I felt my stomach rumble and noticed with some relief that the rest stop’s McDonald’s was still open.

As I walked over to grab a bite, I found myself looking forward to getting something in my belly after a long drive.

The little things. That’s what would get me through this. As long as
I could get that McRib I had been dreaming about, things were going to
be OK.

Phil Margolis sat in his car, drumming his fingers on the steering
wheel of his ‘92 Ford Taurus. It was hot. 102 degrees in the valley.

Phil was waiting in the North Hollywood KFC drive-thru in the middle of the summer and he was not a happy camper.

His mostly non-functional A/C was on full blast but he was still sweating his ass off.

“C’mon! What’s the fuckin’ hold up?” he thought to himself. “They must have hired a bunch of retards in there or something!”

This made him laugh. Retards workin’ the register. No wonder it was taking so long.

Then he thought of his sister’s kid, Kevin and stopped laughing.

It had been almost seven minutes at this point, what the hell was going on in there?

He thought about beeping as he craned his head to see if he could
catch a glimpse of the situation inside of the restaurant, when he saw
the reason for the delay.

The men held large guns and wore masks. One of them was behind the
counter with a guy who looked like the manager. He fumbled with the
register and the gunman grew impatient, jabbing him in the ribs with
the butt of his gun.

The rest of the employees and customers were seated on the floor
against the wall. A few of the masked men held them at gunpoint.

Holy shit. A robbery. It didn’t seem real.

Phil felt like he was watching a movie or something.

He looked around, nobody had seemed to notice outside the restaurant.

He grabbed for his cellphone, but as he was about to dial 911, he stopped.

What good would that do? Who knows when the hell the cops would get here. Fuckin’ cops.

Either the perps would be long gone, or they’d get caught up in a
firefight with the police officers. Or worse: it would devolve into
some sort of hostage situation.

And then how many people would be dead?

No, it was best if Phil handled this himself.

He looked around in his car for a weapon. Usually, he kept a
baseball bat handy, in case some punks tried to “jack” him, but his
wife had made him take it out just last week, after he threatened that
kid with the motor scooter.

“Damnit, Peg!” he yelled.

Then Phil slapped himself on the forehead as he realized he had
stupidly missed the fact that he had been holding a weapon in his hands
this whole time.

A 3000-pound weapon, molded from the finest steel Detroit had to offer.

Phil hit his turn signal and pulled his car out of the drive-thru
lane. He backed up until he was perpendicular with the restaurant.

He had about 25 feet to get his speed up before he hit the side of the building. He was gonna have to floor it.

Phil imagined his car careening through the side of the building, coming to rest on the skulls of those filthy criminals.

Meanwhile, inside, the gang, realizing this was not going to be the
lucrative transaction they had hoped for, decided to make a break for
it.

They had $123.46 in cash. That was about 20 bucks each. They decided
to call it a loss and be on their way. Besides the manager getting
roughed up a little, nobody had been hurt.

Just as they were about to leave, the lookout saw the beat-up Ford heading for the building.

“Oh shit!” was all he managed to get out before the entire restaurant was filled with shards of shattered glass.

The criminals managed to miss most of it, as the brunt of the flying
glass was absorbed by a group of small children sitting on the floor by
the condiment station.

Phil’s car had gone through the main doors and over the counter,
pinning the manager against a wall and knocking over the main fryer.

As he took his last breaths, his body nearly severed in half by
Phil’s front bumper, the manager noticed that he couldn’t feel the
flames rising up his leg.

The front entrance had been a load-bearing wall. The force of Phil’s
car impacting it had been enough to jarr the roof, which was in the
process of collapsing just as all six of the criminals managed to slip
out the door.

The only other survivor that day was Phil himself. He was able to
extricate himself from his car, the frame of which had survived
the roof falling on it and shimmy his way out of the rubble.

Ignoring the cries of the wounded, in order to “make sure he was
able to get help”, Phil walked out into the sunlight nearly unscathed.

The others were not so lucky.

Later, the coroner would determine that nearly everyone but
the manager had survived the initial impact, even the kids who had been
showered with glass, but later died from the flames started by the
over-turned fryer.

Sadly, this tragedy could have been prevented had Phil only spent an
extra three seconds of his time reaching his arm out to hit the
emergency sprinkler button on the wall.

In fact, when he was crawling out of the debris, he had taken extra
care to go around this wall, for reasons unknown to anyone but himself.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine!” Phil announced to the arriving police and firemen.

When they realized what he had done, the lead officer on duty had
slapped Phil so vigorously, he missed nearly three days of work due to
his injuries.

Luckily for him, the resulting bad publicity for the police
department led to all the charges against Phil Margolis being dropped.

Of course, this didn’t stop him from suing the city for gross
negligence and a violation of his civil rights. He didn’t get rich, but
he did manage to bankrupt the school system.

So, all in all, things worked out pretty well for ol’ Phil and that’s why he’s my hero.

I remember in the months after September 11th, people were on edge.

Any sort of problem at an airport or loss of power and people would freak out and assume it was terrorism.

I remember the morning the Space Shuttle Columbia blew up, February 1, 2003, I got a call from my friend Aaron Burnett.

It was real early, I was still asleep, but I could hear the panic in his voice.

“Eric, it’s Aaron, the space shuttle blew up!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, that sucks,” was all I could think to say.

“They blew it up, those dirty motherfuckers blew it up!”

I wasn’t sure who the “dirty motherfuckers” were then, but I know now he meant terrorists.

Of course, this theory was quickly discounted. There isn’t a missle
in the world that can shoot down an object travelling 12,500 miles an
hour, 39 miles high in the sky, but whatever.

This was a big turning point for Aaron. When 9/11 had happened, he
made all sorts of promises about how he was going to change his life.

I think with time, peoples’ memories of that day have faded. It’s
hard to believe it’s been five years. Things have largely returned to
normal, but for a while, it seemed as if it was true that it was “the
day when everything changed”.

Aaron never really followed through on his promise to get a new job,
one that made a difference in the world. He worked in reality
television and I remember talking to him about what the world was going
to be like now that everything had changed. He told me that nobody was
going to bother watching stupid reality TV shows anymore. There were
more important things on their minds.

Aaron typed up his resignation the night of September 11th and
brought it in to work the next day, but when he arrived, it was
business as usual, so he quickly stuck it in his pocket, never to be
delivered.

We would tease Aaron about how he never followed through on
anything, but that wasn’t really fair. A lot of people made all sorts
of crazy declarations that day. We all sorta lost our minds, which is
understandable, considering what happened.

I think if all my friends had followed through on half of what they
said that day, 15 of them would be in a Marine unit, somewhere in Iraq
right now.

Anyway, the space shuttle blowing up stood as a reminder for Aaron.
A reminder of the changes he said he was going to make, but never did.

Over lunch, he told me it was, once again, time to change his life and that this time he was serious.

“I’m sure you are, Aaron,” I said, taking a bite of my burger.

“Listen, I know you guys think I’m full of shit, but I swear to you,
I am ready to follow through now,” he articulated through a mouth full
of fries.

As I watched him stuff his fat face, I felt sorry for him, because I
knew that in his mind, what he was saying was true, but I also knew his
promises to eat healthier, take more day trips and fly a kite in the
park every third Sunday were just as unrealistic as him joining the
Peace Corps.

Which is why I was quite surprised when he called me that night.

It was after midnight and when I answered my phone, I heard his voice triumphantly ring out, “I did it!”

What Aaron “did” was nothing he had mentioned that day at lunch. In
fact, he hadn’t mentioned anything about it for at least 20 years.

Aaron had recaptured a piece of his childlike spirit.

I asked him what the hell this meant. He told me that after
September 11th, the greatest loss we felt was the loss of America’s
innocence.

I didn’t point out that familes of the 3000+ dead might disagree
with this, but he seemed pretty excited and I didn’t want to burst his
bubble.

Anyway, Aaron felt that we all needed to do something that took us
back to our childhoods, when things were simple and easy. He had
thought this meant flying a kite in the park on every third Sunday, but
when he was really honest with himself, there was something else that
his ingenuous soul longed for.

“Picture pages.”

“What?” I asked, dumbfounded.

“Picture pages. C’mon, you remember Picture Pages? With Bill Cosby!”
I’ve never gotten a phone call from a meth addict, but I’m sure that
this was on a similiar level of manic-ness and insanity.

I did vaguely remember Picture Pages. It was a show, aimed at the
pre-school crowd in which Bill Cosby would teach lessons about spelling
and math and stuff by drawing on a big pad of paper with a special
magic marker.

I remember the marker made a weird noise when he used it. I don’t remember anything about innocence though.

Aaron told me that it was his favorite memory of childhood. He would
get up early to watch Captain Kangaroo and he would play along with his
very own Picture Pages at home, which arrived via subscription, which
your parents paid for.

He would look forward to every Thursday afternoon, because that’s
when the new Picture Pages would arrive. He would crack them open and
imagine all the wonderful, magical things Bill Cosby would say and do,
come Saturday morning.

When he was 11 and his mother told him he was too old for Picture
Pages and cancelled his subscription, Aaron was never quite the same.

I sat there in my bed, listening to Aaron enthuse about Picture
Pages for God knows how long. I know I drifted in and out of sleep
several times. When I finally told him I needed to go, it was 3 am.

Aaron jumped into his Picture Pages obsession with a fervor and
intensity that most people reserve for something that isn’t totally
retarded and gay.

In addition to securing his weekly subscription through 2009, he
scoured eBay and the internet for back issues, wrote letters to Bill
Cosby on a weekly basis and made his own Picture Pages Fan Club.

I have to admit, that as stupid as it was, Aaron really did seem a lot happier, now that he had his Picture Pages.

Which is why I set out to ruin it for him.

For this, I went back to the classics: the Mickey Finn.

In case this fact is lost on you, a “Mickey Finn” or “a Mickey”, is
when you add the drug chloral hydrate to someone’s alcoholic drink.

It’s a really effective way to get someone unconscious.

Aaron’s birthday was just around the corner, which would be perfect,
so I made a few calls to some local prostitutes I knew and the scheme
was hatched.

Me and some buddies took Aaron to his favorite watering hole, which
was the bar at the Woodland Hills TGI Fridays and lo and behold, when
we got there, there were some really skanky women there who wanted to
meet him!

They liked him so much, they invited themselves back to his
apartment and since he was in no frame of mind to object, they all
piled into his car and headed back to his place to party.

Of course, he was out within minutes of walking in the door and when
he awoke, three days later, he was horrified to see all his Picture
Pages stuff was gone.

If you steal someone’s car, they call their insurance company and
get a new one. If you steal someone’s wallet, they call Visa and their
money is put back in their account. If you steal someone’s innocence,
there’s no replacing that.

Aaron was devastated. He called us, he called the cops, he called out to God.

Aaron had boxes and boxes of Picture Pages, all wrapped in clear, plastic, Mylar bags, like the kind nerds put comic books in.

When the VHS tape arrived at his doorstep, marked only with the words, “Play Me” on it, Aaron braced himself for the worst.

He shook as he watched his beloved Picture Pages individually
removed from their bags and deliberately inserted into the
industrial-grade shredder.

He screamed out in horror as the shreds were then taken to a farm,
used to line the floor of a chicken coop and then defecated on by those
filthy birds.

By the time the tape got to the part where the masked men scooped up
the shit-covered remains of his Picture Pages, stuck them into a giant
box addressed to Aaron and delivered it to UPS, he was just gently
sobbing, rocking back and forth on the floor in the fetal position.

You can imagine what he must have felt when that very box arrived the next day.

He was drunk and unshaven, he looked like shit. Aaron had given up
on life. In fact, he had begun planning out his suicide. Though, in all
fairness, he was probably never going to go through with it.

His hands trembled as he slit open the tape that held the top flaps
of the box together. He opened it and saw only packing peanuts at
first, but as he dug deeper, he thought he must have been dreaming,
because he found not the feces-smeared remains of his beloved Picture
Pages, but rather the Mylar-wrapped, intact Picture Pages themselves!

He was about to jump for joy when his front door burst open and me and my buddies yelled “Surprise!” at the top of our lungs.

Aaron was startled, he had no idea what was happening, but he was so
happy that his Picture Pages weren’t shredded, he didn’t seem to care.

We hugged and he cried. Then I cried. We all cried and hugged and hugged and cried.

My plan couldn’t have gone off more perfectly.

If you know me, you know I am a huge fan of the Michael Douglas/Sean Penn movie, “The Game”.

It has always been my dream to orchestrate an elaborate ruse, like
the kind in the movie. One where things are not as they seem and at the
end you learn a big lesson.

We had drugged Aaron and stolen his Picture Pages, this was true.
But we had also purchased some shitty, scribbled-on Picture Pages from
a guy in Tennessee. For 20 bucks, we got thousands of them. And these
were the ones we had shredded.

On the video, you couldn’t really tell the difference. Even Aaron
had been completely fooled. He laughed as we told him about all the
work that had gone into my plan.

“Well buddy, now that it’s over, I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” I said, as I put my arm around my friend.

“I sure have. Innocence doesn’t live in the pages of one of your
treasured childhood things,” he picked up one of his Picture Pages as
he said this, “it lives in here, in your heart.”

“Well said, pal, well said,” I was feeling extremely pleased with myself.

Aaron sat down on the couch and leafed through the book, but
something was wrong. He grabbed another, pulling it from the plastic
and frantically going through the pages.

“No! No! No!” he screamed as he went through the box like a maniac.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” I asked. Had we gotten some fingerprints on them when we were switching out the bags?

“You idiot!” he screamed at me. He got up and lunged at me, knocking us both to the floor.

As he tried his best to inflict damage upon me with his laughably
weak, little girl arms, he revealed to us all that we had mixed up his
Picture Pages with the scribbled-on ones I had gotten online.

“So what we shredded was your real ones?” I asked.

“Yes, you fucking moron!” he was crying now as he did his best to
beat me up and I did my best not to laugh. “How could you mix them up?”

“I dunno, they all kinda look the same, I guess. Hey, get off me,
I’m sick of this.” I pushed him off and stood up. As I dusted myself
off, my buddies proceeded to kick the shit out of Aaron.

I could have stopped them, but I was pretty pissed off.

“Frankly, Aaron, you haven’t learned a damn thing. The point is,
your Picture Pages don’t matter. That was the lesson. Your innocence
lives in your heart, remember?”

“Help me… make them stop,” he pleaded, as he choked on his own blood.

His pleas fell on deaf ears, I was too disgusted to intervene.

Even now, as I write this, I feel the bitterness, I taste it in my
mouth. I fear for the future. I fear that Aaron will one day be running
the country, making important decisions and basing them on unimportant
things; on material goods.

Well, not Aaron, because he’s a vegetable now, but someone like him.

When I was about five years old, the one thing I wanted most in the world was a Mr. Microphone.

Mr. Microphone was a handheld, wireless microphone with some sort of
primitive transmitter in it that would project your voice over an FM
radio station on a nearby radio.

Oh man, this thing was the coolest! I still vaguely remember the ad campaign that
was on every five seconds on channel 11. You know how susceptible to
marketing kids are, how could I resist such an onslaught?

Well, I begged and begged and begged my mother to buy me a Mr.
Microphone, but she pulled out her usual bullshit excuse: “You’ll have
to ask Santa for it”.

Really Mom? You couldn’t fork over 15 bucks to make all my dreams
come true? Thanks a lot. No no, I understand, you’ve got German luxury
cars to buy.

Anyway, I wasn’t about to “work” or “save up my money”, so I asked
the fat man for my very own Mr. Microphone and come Christmas morning,
I looked under the tree and I was not disappointed.

Who cares if it sounded like crap? I was on the radio! I could sing and tell jokes and make fart noises to my heart’s content!

Well, actually, I could do that for like six minutes before my dad
got sick of listening to that and sent me up to my room to play with
it.

Fuck it, I’d rather be alone anyway. I didn’t need adults pointing
out how it sounded really staticky or that I sang like a girl.

Eventually, Christmas dinner came around and I was forced out of my
exile and had to come down and socialize with our guests, some of whom
were my best friend Ashley and her family.

Ashley was around my age and when my mom started shooting off her
big mouth about how I had gotten a Mr. Microphone for Christmas, of
course Ashley wanted to use it.

Now, I had left it upstairs specifically to avoid anyone else
touching it, so I was not very happy and had to be smacked around
liberally by my physically abusive mother before I would go and get it.

I brought it downstairs with the intent of letting Ashley watch me
as I used it, or perhaps even allowing her to speak into it for a brief
moment while I held it, but she didn’t like this and soon everyone at
dinner had turned on me. They were all demanding that I fork over my
most prized possession to someone who was clearly not technically
qualified to handle such serious equipment.

That uppity bitch was getting pretty pissed off and I can’t say I
blame her. My Mr. Microphone was really cool and awesome and I can
understand wanting to play with it. My question is: why couldn’t anyone
else understand me not wanting to share it?

The world is totally unfair and I was just starting to learn that.

Armed with the assurance of my traitor mom that I had to let her use
it, Ashley advanced on me. It really was one of those moments where you
can kinda see something bigger is going on.

“Give in! Conform! Do what society tells you!” they all seemed to be saying to me.

I found myself extending my arm, about to hand it over when I
suddenly recoiled. I couldn’t do it. I wasn’t going to play their game.
I wasn’t going to act the part of the perfect child. No tennis lessons
for me, I’m getting a BMX bike and I’m going to do tricks and not wear
a helmet.

I knew what I had to do.

I punched Ashley in the stomach and ran for it. I had almost reached
the stairs when I saw my father coming at me from the right, I had no
choice but to double back.

Ashley had recovered and had joined in the chase. I jumped the three
or four stairs down to the conversation pit in our living room and soon
found myself trapped; going in circles around a couch as she followed
close behind.

My only option was to give up. Hand over my beloved Mr. Microphone
and watch while she got her smelly breath all over the orange puffball
windscreen.

I looked up to the dining room and saw our assembled guests looking
at me with hate. So what if I didn’t want to share? So what if I had
assaulted a little girl? Hate? I was five goddam years old!

Well, if they hated me, what did I have to lose?

I took Mr. Microphone, truly the one thing I cared about most in the world and I smashed it on the floor.

Play with it now, Ashley! Take that, you bitch!

As Ashley cried, my mother grabbed my arm and dragged me up to my room.

Everybody seemed pretty disgusted with me, but you know what? Fuck ‘em. I’d do it again. I won.

"Don’t move or I’ll blow your fucking head off."

The voice was calm. It emitted absolute authority.

Mark
DePonce woke his wife, Cheryl. As she came to, she saw the four armed
men in masks standing in a semi-circle around her bed and she screamed.
Mark put his hand over his wife’s mouth.

"We just do what they
say, honey," he assured her, as her eyes grew wide with terror and she
thrashed against her husband as he held her still.

"Yeah, this bitch would do well to listen to you." Only the leader spoke.

"I
will not have you speak like that in my home–". He was trying to be a
toughguy, but the sawed-off shotgun to his temple put an end to that
act.

Mark DePonce shut up and urinated all over himself and his wife, but neither seemed to notice.

The
four men motioned for them to walk downstairs to the living room where
two more men were waiting with the three DePonce children.

"Daddy, what’s going on?" asked the middle child, Jessica.

"It’s gonna be OK, baby. Just be quiet and do what these men say, OK?" She nodded.

Jessica
held on to her little sister, Megan, who was only six. Their older
brother, Matthew, had his arms around both of them. He was protecting
his little sisters and his father swelled up with pride until he
noticed the lack of urine on his son’s underwear, which stood in stark
contrast to his own soaked pajamas. His pride was quickly replaced with
shame.

Mark’s mind was going a mile a minute. He looked for any
sort of blunt instrument he could use to turn the tables. Not finding
any, he reminded himself he was no Steven Seagal. No, it was best to
play along, do whatever they said.

The family stood there for a moment, not sure what was coming.

After what seemed like a whole lifetime of waiting, the leader produced a 9mm handgun and issued a command to Mark: "Choose."

The
children looked to their father, confused. He couldn’t look back at
them, though. He knew all too well what the man in the mask was asking
him to do.

"I can’t… I can’t do it," he pleaded in a tone of
desperation that sent shivers up the spines of his wife and children.
This was their father, their husband, their protector. He sounded like
a scared, little child.

"Fine. Then I shoot them all. All but you," said the voice.

"You
bastard!" Mark grew a sack and lunged at the leader. It was futile. Two
others grabbed him and a third hit him on the back of the head with the
butt of his shotgun.

Mark felt his face against the cold floor,
the knee of one of the men on his back. The face of the leader loomed
large above him.

"You fucking coward," he said with disgust,
"you wanted us to shoot you. You go out the hero and you don’t have to
make the decision."

As he said it, Mark realized the man was right.

"Pick this piece of shit up," he commanded.

The others roughly pulled Mark to his feet. His wife and children were crying now.

"Listen
up, buddy boy, no matter what you choose, someone’s gonna die. And it
ain’t gonna be you. You’ll live a long life, grow old and have to think
about this choice you’re going to make for a long time. I’ll see to
that."

Mark hung his head. How could anyone make such a decision?

"I can’t," he whispered.

"Fine, they all die." The man raised his gun to Matthew’s head.

"Daddy?" he sobbed.

"No!" Mark yelled, "I’ll do it."

"Good," said the man.

"Cheryl, I’m sorry," Mark said through his tears.

Cheryl
felt immediate betrayal. This was her soulmate, the man she loved. But
in the seconds that followed, she realized she would have done the
same, to protect the children.

"I love you," she mouthed to him.

"Wrong," said the man in the mask. "You choose one of them." He motioned towards the kids.

"Goddamit!" Mark cried out, "Have some fucking mercy, they’re children for Christ’s sake!" The kids crying got louder.

"5…" the leader counted down.

"No, I won’t," insisted Mark.

"4… 3…" Continued the voice behind the mask.

"2…" He cocked his gun.

"1…" He again raised his gun to Matthew’s head.

"Wait! Fine! It’s Megan! Shoot Megan!" screamed Mark DePonce, motioning towards his youngest daughter.

"What?!"
came the words, so primal and frenzied from Cheryl DePonce as she
struggled in vain to protect her youngest and most-treasured daughter.
"Why not Matthew?" she asked, not realizing what she was saying.

Matthew
looked up at his mother, who was so quick to feed him to the wolves,
but before he could say anything, the man in the mask cut him off.

"It’s
done. You made your choice." He strode over to the little girl, held
the barrel of his handgun against her forehead and squeezed the trigger.

"Click."

They
all stood there. Not sure what had happened. There comes an acceptance
in the last few moments of your life. An acceptance of the finality of
things. And this finality had been disturbed.

"What the–" asked Mark, speaking for the group.

The man in the mask knelt down by the littlest girl and did something odd: he hugged her.

He flung his arms around her neck tenderly and held her head against his face and whispered in her ear as she sobbed.

"It’s going to be OK, none of you are going to die. But you must always remember: they picked you. They love you the least."

And with that, they were off. The family remained standing there, in a trance, wondering what the fuck had just happened.

Outside
in the van, the leader took off his mask. As the guys congratulated
themselves on a job well done, he called someone on his cell phone.

"Hello?" asked the voice, groggy with sleep.

"It’s done," the man said.

"Chad?" I asked.

"I did it, buddy," he said with pride.

"Oh God, what did you do this time?" My mind began to wander the universe of terrible possibilities.

"I got even with that no-good son-of-a-bitch who stole your presidency!"

Albert
Johnson of 1629 Bluebird Lane had ran against me in the election for
leader of our town’s Harvey Danger Fan Club. Things had gotten pretty
heated and it seemed like someone had been spreading rumors about me
and my past involvement with a loose association of people who traded
tapes of Dave Matthews shows. Chances are it wasn’t even Albert, but
one of his supporters who was behind it.

Anyway, like I said,
Albert lived at 1629 Bluebird Lane, right next to Mark DePonce and his
family, who lived at 1633 Bluebird Lane. When my "good buddy", Chad
Robuckle, heard about my loss in the election for presidency of the
Harvey Danger Fan Club, he took it upon himself to "fix things",
concocting this elaborate revenge scheme on Albert and his family.

Of
course, after months of planning, it never occured to Chad to make sure
he entered the correct house and hatch this scheme on the right guy and
not some innocent bystander whose wife was now filing for divorce and
custody of two of her three children.

But hey, that’s Chad for ya.

Am I the only one?

Will no one else stand up to the tyranny of commercialism?

Today,
I was deeply saddened to read that Disneyland will be removing the
roller coaster ride from its beloved classic attraction, "The
Matterhorn" (http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=2291769).

"Oh no, they’re tearing down the Matterhorn?" you ask?

No, they are not. They are removing the ride and leaving the building intact.

And what are they putting in the building, you ask? A store.

Not just a store, a Disney Store.

Maybe I’m showing my age, call me a relic, if you like, but I actually like the Matterhorn.

Sure,
it’s old and it’s corny when the abominable snowman lights up and
growls at you, but what’s wrong with some good, old-fashioned, corny
fun?

When I go to Disneyland, it’s not to ride the latest thrill
rides. If I want to go on a roller coaster that’s 500 feet tall and
goes 120 miles an hour, I’ll go to Six Flags. That’s also where I go if
I want to get stabbed, but that’s a topic for another time.

I go
to Disneyland to relieve my childhood. I walk under the train station
and onto Main Street, USA and I am a kid again. Everything is safe and
fun and the world makes sense. I see limitless possibilities laid out
in front of me. Life is good.

Do I believe those are real
elephants in the Jungle Cruise? No, they look fake as hell. Am I scared
by any of the ghosts in the Haunted Mansion? Fuck no, asshole. I’m no
pussy. Do I think I’m really in "the world of tomorrow" when I walk
past Space Mountain? I’m not even going to answer that.

It’s
called "willing suspension of disbelief" and to all those people out
there who lack an imagination: you should try it. If you can’t take 10
hours out of your day where you pretend you’re not a miserable son of a
bitch, then I truly feel sorry for you.

When I would get in line
at the base of that big, white mountain, I would look up at its peak in
awe. Since I don’t believe in vaccinations, I’ll never get to travel
overseas and see the real Matterhorn, so this is as close as I will
get. I stand there by the pine trees and breathe in their scent. The
sound of yodelers fills my ears. I close my eyes and I’m in Switzerland.

The ride is old, I understand that. According to the article, that’s the reason they gave for closing it.

"’Popa
granda’ is a Swiss word for ‘grandfather’ and we believe the Matterhorn
is the Popa Granda of Disneyland. Unfortunately, it just got to the
point where it was no longer cost-effective to keep repairing the
track, but it was important to us that we kept the spirit of the
Matterhorn intact," said Sharon Mullcahy, Senior VP of Attraction
Development.

They plan to "keep the spirit of the
Matterhorn intact" by continuing the Swiss mountains theme of the
original ride inside the store. Whoop dee doo.

The article goes
on to cite the cost of several major refurbishments in the past few
years and it does seem prohibitive, I will give them that. I remember
visiting Disneyland many times and seeing a big white wall around the
entrance to the ride as the Imagineers fixed it, yet again.

When
you ride it, it jostles you around and you’ve only got an old, frayed
seat belt holding you in. It is definitely a "blast from the past" and
I feel that’s why it needs to be saved. You can’t find rides like this
anymore. I, for one, would be willing to take a bump in admission price
if it meant saving the Matterhorn.

But, like I said earlier,
this isn’t about old rides getting phased out. This is about the
tyranny of commercialism. I might even buy the Disney Company Line, if
not for the fact that they’re replacing my favorite ride of all time with a store.

Tear
it down, make a new ride - even that would be less objectionable. Screw
it up by making it "The Emperor’s New Groove Presents: the Matterhorn".
I would take all these options over the one they have now.

The last
thing Disneyland needs is more shopping. May I remind the executives
that this is not a mall. It’s a theme park. I understand the need for
merchandising, but not at the expense of the visceral thrills that draw
you to the park in the first place.

That should always be the focus of a great theme park, everything else is ancillary.

In the past, this has always been the Disney way, but now, I fear they’ve taken that model and flipped it.

If
the Matterhorn Disney Store is a big hit, what’s next? "Tom Sawyer’s
Nike Emporium Island"? "Peter Pan’s Magical Flight Through the Apple
Store"? "Pirates of the Caribbean starring characters from the motion
picture starring Johnny Depp"?

Doesn’t seem so crazy now, does it?

I
know there’s been some controversy regarding these recently, what with
young kids being told to go out and get abortions or something, but I
don’t care.

I love my American Girl doll!

I know what you’re going to say.

"You’re a 30 year old man, you like women, you went out and bought an $87 doll from a website: THAT’S A GREAT IDEA!"

And
you’re right: it is a great idea! I named her Cristifina Filipkowski,
after my brother’s childhood imaginary friend who died of neglect. What
brought me to this life-altering decision?

Some would call it genius marketing but I have a different word for it: kismet. Look it up.

Just like you
It’s your story, your star! Choose a doll, clothes, and accessories that tell a story all your own. For ages 8+.

Just
like me? I’ve always wanted something "just like me". My whole life,
I’ve felt ripped off because I wasn’t a twin. I’ve hated and blamed my
parents all my life for not being a twin but with Cristifina in my
life, I feel the healing can now begin. I’m a star!

Tell a story? I love writing! How did you know?!? This is getting spooky now!

For ages 8+? That’s me! OMG! I am so excited!

But which doll to choose? There’s so many to pick from.

Well,
cross off the minority ones right off the bat. While I often feel
alienated from society, like an outsider, I’m looking for a doll who’s
"just like me" and I don’t want to co-opt anyone’s culture.

That
leaves the white ones. I don’t have curly hair, I’m not blonde… the
list is getting narrower… I need the one that’s truly "just like
me"… Here we go!

"Light skin, red hair, blue eyes"

Just like I have! I had found the doll that was "just like me"! I think you’ll agree, the resemblance is remarkable.

Now it was time to place my order, sit back and wait and start telling stories of my (our) own!

When
Cristifina arrived, I was not disappointed. She was a beauty and her
resemblance to her paternal great-grandmother was dead-on. I took her
out of the box and welcomed her into the world.

"You are special," I told her, as I cradled her in my arms, "there’s no one in the world just like you except me."

I
kissed her gently on her forehead and rocked her back and forth. I was
so happy! For the first time in my life, I felt complete! Thank you,
American Girl!

I had also purchased the "Kickin’ Back" outfit
for $26 and as I changed my doll into her cropped pants,
diagonal-striped tank and green hoodie, I could barely contain my
excitement at the thought of showing her off to all my friends!

I packed her extra clothes and accessories into the $38 "Backpack for Girls" (yes, I think that’s sexist too) and we were off.

We
were off to the local watering hole to meet up with some friends. As I
strode into the bar, we immediately became the center of attention.

"Cool sandals!" enthused a normally surly-looking biker from his bar stool.

Three 20-something girls walked right up to us, drinks in hand. "Oh my god, she is adorable, what’s her name?" one asked me.

"Cristifina," I said with pride.

"She is too cute! I have a hoodie just like that!"

And the night pretty much went like that.

People wanted to hold my doll, give her a hug, get their picture taken with her. She was a hit. We were a hit.

It was one magical night. Unfortunately, it would be our only magical night.

My
story with Cristifina Filipkowski ends there. I’m sorry it’s not the
fairy tale you may have been hoping for. If you want to stop reading
here, I don’t blame you, but you’ll be missing out on a cautionary tale
that anyone who has ever given their heart to someone unconditionally
will be able to relate to.

When you meet someone online, you’re
not really getting to know them, you’re getting to know who and what
they want you to see about themselves. It’s an idealized version of who
they are.

If I had known the real Cristifina Filipkowski, I
would have never taken her anywhere that served alcohol. Not in a
million years. But I didn’t know that side of her. The ugly side, so
full of pain. The side that didn’t really like who she was and
certainly didn’t know how to love herself. The side that tried to bury
all her problems at the bottom of a bottle.

I’m not going to
recount all her awful behavior that night. I’m not looking for revenge,
I’m not "venting". I don’t want to slam her. She’s a good kid and we
really could have made something out of this and I hope one day, when
some time has passed, we can start over as friends.

As we left
the bar that night, Cristifina was flying high. I didn’t think anything
of it, at first. She was new in town, had just been getting acquainted
with me and all my friends. I understood she was probably nervous and
looking to unwind a bit. But when we stepped out into the cool, night
air, she became a different person. As I went to get my car from the
valet, I took my eyes off of her for maybe 30 seconds, but when I
turned around she was making out with the biker who had complimented
her sandals earlier. The sandals I bought her.

"Cristifina," I said, my voice heavy with hurt, "baby, what are you doing?"

She
broke off her kiss with the biker and turned to face me with nothing
resembling love. "Who are you calling "baby"? I’m not your fucking
baby!" she screamed at me.

"Please, Cristifina, you’re making a scene," I pleaded with her.

"I’m
making a scene? I’m making a scene? You bring a fucking doll to a bar
and I’m the one making a scene?" the words came from someone I thought
I knew but clearly didn’t and that’s what hurt the most.

"I
think you’ve had too much to drink, let’s go home before you say or do
anything you’re going to regret later," I tried to reason with her.

"What the fuck did you just say? Are you fucking threatening me?" asked a hysterical Cristifina Filipkowski.

She pulled out the "Cuttin’ and Stabbin’" switchblade I had bought for her ($23) and waved it at me in a menacing fashion.

This cleared the crowd out pretty quickly.

I backed away, trying to hasten my exit before the cops got there.

"Are you crying, you little faggot?" she asked me, mockingly.

It
was true, I was crying. If things weren’t going to work out with us,
fine, I can deal with that. But seeing her this way broke my heart. All
I ever really wanted was for us to be happy.

"I’m sorry, Cristifina, I hope you can find some peace, someday." I genuinely meant it.

"I’m serious, asshole. Get the fuck out of my face before I cut you!"

I
didn’t need to be told twice. I heard the sirens as I ran for my car. I
guess she got out of there too because I didn’t see any mention of her
in the police reports in the paper.

I really do want to thank
American Girl. I don’t regret my experience in any way. You live, you
learn and you move on, stronger and smarter than you were.

I
know this is a company that has helped lots of young girls expand their
imaginations and that is a great thing, I don’t begrude them that. I
mean, I know the target customer for these dolls is not someone who’s
likely going to bring their doll to a bar, so I don’t know if I see a
need for any sort of rigorous background testing for drug and alcohol
dependence.

I know Cristifina is a good person. I know that
what I witnessed was a relapse. It’s an illness and to deny her the
right to love would be as unfair as denying the same to a cancer
patient.

I just wish it could have worked out because I know I could have made her so happy.

OK, so I admit it.

I have too many blogs.

But, this is an attempt to cut back. To consolidate. From this point on, I will have hollywoodphony.com, where I will put up my fictional stories, chadrobuckle.com, where I will host my podcast and happyfuncamp.com,
where I will post real blogs about pop culture, technology, gossip,
stuff I saw, cartoons I drew, fake movie reviews, pictures I’ve taken,
videos I think are funny, etc.

What about the other 15 blogs
I’ve got? Well, most likely I won’t be posting on them… maybe a lone
post from time to time. It’s just too much work, between those blogs
and my ten Myspace accounts, I hardly have time for my six-hour mid-day
naps anymore.

Anyway, enjoy!

A note to my family:
If you are reading this now, please consider before continuing: you
will remember that in July of 2003, I disappeared for a while. When I
returned, I told you that I had been on a last-minute, emergency
charity trip to Burma to help out some orphans. This was not true, but
for a long time, I would rather you continued believing this lie than
knowing the truth. Thank you.

There is a show on the air
that you may or may not know of. It is called “South Park” and it is an
animated series that airs on the Comedy Central cable network. It is
known for its outlandish and crude humor, but I have found that it
often treats current issues with a surprising amount of thought and
insight, if you manage to look past the potty humor.

One
episode, however, went way too far, in my mind. I believe in freedom of
speech. I’m all for protecting the rights of artists to follow their
vision and not be prevented in doing so by the government, BUT, along
with this right comes a responsibility. The responsibility to own up to
the consequences of the art you create.

Do I feel celebrities
should get a free pass and be protected from criticism or satire? No,
of course not. Paris Hilton is a public figure. She has chosen this
path and courted her own celebrity status. The issue is not whether
it’s ok to make fun of her because she’s a celebrity. The issue is
whether it’s ok to make fun of anyone who has befallen tragedy.

It’s
not wrong to make fun of Magic Johnson and his AIDS because he’s a
celebrity; it’s wrong because AIDS is a horrible thing. You shouldn’t
make fun of anyone for having AIDS or cancer or whatever. It’s not the
law, but it should be.

And just like it’s not ok to make fun of
people with AIDS, it’s not ok to make fun of people who have befallen
Paris Hilton’s fate, either.

In season 8, episode 12, Comedy
Central aired an episode entitled “Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset”
in which Miss Hilton comes to South Park and exerts her influence over
the town’s young girls, to disastrous results. I see the need to
satirize a situation in which a young woman of questionable morals,
famous only for being rich and spoiled, becomes a role model to the
youth of today. Believe me, I understand.

But how do the
creators of South Park dispense of the villain in this episode? By
having a naked gay man jump on her head, inserting her whole body into
his anal cavity.

I am not making this up; this is actually what happened in this episode.

If someone could explain to me how this is funny in any way, shape or form, I would appreciate it, because I am clueless.

Perhaps
I’m biased, due to my own experiences, but this is just plain gross.
Nobody should have to endure that kind of punishment, no matter how
awful a person they are.

Trust me, when I say this is a fate worse than death.

July
17, 2003: Alicia Jane Stevenson, certified by the Guinness Book as the
world’s fattest woman, is flying from her home in Texas to the
(unfortunately named) Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota to undergo
emergency gastric bypass in a last-ditch attempt to save her life.

Miss Stevenson is grossly obese and suffering from numerous medical problems related to her enormous weight.

As
the custom-retrofitted C 27 cargo plane chartered by the Oprah Winfrey
Show for the sole purpose of bringing Miss Stevenson to the weight loss
clinic is passing over Des Moines, Iowa, it encounters severe
turbulence, causing the plane to rock back and forth. As it does so,
its cargo breaks free from its tether and begins rolling around. This,
in turn, causes the plane to pitch violently from side to side, setting
off a disastrous chain reaction.

The pilots, unable to control
the plane and steady its 1200 pound passenger, had only one option. I
don’t blame them for lowering the cargo ramp and going into a steep
climb. They did what they thought was their only option. Are three
deaths better than one?

Meanwhile, 23,000 feet below all of
this, a lone man spies a black spot emerging from an airplane. He
notices it getting slightly larger as it falls to earth. He cranes his
head upwards, unable to discern what it is. By the time he realizes
what it is and where it is headed, it is too late to run.

You
may remember the story of Alicia Jane Stevenson: her courageous
journey, her terrible fall and her miraculous survival. It was all over
the media how this poor woman had been jettisoned from the very
airplane that had been trying to save her. How she had fallen from that
height, reaching such speeds and yet walked away from the incident
without a scratch. It was the lead story for days.

Doctors
wanted to examine this miracle woman and make sure that all her bones
and internal organs were intact. The problem is, there isn’t an x-ray,
cat scan or MRI machine in the world that is large enough to contain
her.

I am sad that we live in a world where the almighty dollar
dictates who gets medical treatment and who doesn’t, because if they
had been able to stuff that fat bitch into an x-ray machine, they would
have seen the grown man stuck inside of her vaginal cavity.

They would have seen me.

The
fact that one person could have survived such a fall is beyond
explanation. The fact that two people could survive such an impact is
beyond belief.

What I have been told is that thanks to a
one-in-a-million shot, I entered this woman in the exact right
location. Her body absorbed the shock of our contact, as if one of
those giant air bags that people jump from a building and land on had
landed on me, instead of the other way around… I don’t really know, it
doesn’t make much sense to me.

All I know is, I was now trapped in a living hell that would eventually last for 23 days.

On
South Park, Paris Hilton crawls around and interacts with mythical
characters. In reality, you are in complete darkness, breathing in foul
air, unable to move.

I screamed, but nobody could hear me. I
tried to make noise by tapping on the walls of this woman’s internal
organs, but that only made horrible, horrible things happen. This was
easily one of the worst things that ever happened to me and I wouldn’t
wish it on all but the most evil of men.

Her body recognized me
as a foreign entity and her immune system reacted by trying to destroy
me. I was covered in goo, which I was forced to eat to survive. I began
to hallucinate. I imagined I was an olde tyme miner and I had been
trapped in a cave-in. At one point, I believed I was an astronaut, set
adrift in his space capsule, unable to contact earth.

As the
weeks went by, eventually, I gave up all hope. I looked for a means to
hasten my demise, but finding none, accepted the fact that I would
probably starve to death.

Then, it happened. The literal light at the end of the tunnel. Hands. Reaching in and grabbing me.

Had
I indeed died, then been reincarnated as a newborn baby? What was
happening? I reached out to steady myself, the sensation of falling was
overwhelming.

I was lying on the floor of a large, white room. I was wet and cold. There were doctors everywhere.

“Ga ga goo goo,” I said, trying my best to adapt to my new situation.

The
room erupted in laughter. “Well he’s still got a sense of humor, that’s
a good sign!” said one of the doctors. I looked behind me and saw the
most enormous person I had ever seen. There was a gaping chasm… I
followed the slime trail from it to my present location… everything
clicked… and I lost consciousness.

For 23 days, the state of
Iowa had been unable to locate a freight scale that was mobile, yet
could handle a 1200 pound load. At last, a cattle farmer in Altoona was
located who had the equipment to handle those specifications.

The
first sign that something wasn’t right came when this 1200 pound woman
was rolled onto the scale and it gave her weight as 1400 pounds. Even
someone on a 20,000 calorie diet can’t gain that much weight in such a
short time.

The scale had to be wrong. It was quickly recalibrated and again, the same result came up.

The
doctors were mystified, but luckily for me, a young intern named Sandra
Chopak had a hunch. The best OB/GYNs in the state were brought in and
an ultrasound of Miss Stevenson’s uterus was ordered. That’s when they
saw it, or rather heard it: another heart beat.

Naturally, they
jumped to the wrong conclusion. What are you going to believe? That
some fatass had a 200 pound baby in her or that she fell on a grown man
when she was ejected from a cargo plane? Don’t be an idiot.

Well, further tests revealed what was really going on and I was quickly removed from my vaginal hell.

I
could have cleaned up, financially, with a lawsuit, but the last thing
I wanted was more publicity; to relieve this experience over and over
on national TV. I was embarrassed. I told Oprah and her producers that
if she wanted to make this all go away, she had my word I wouldn’t seek
a dime from her.

And I haven’t. I have not spoken to anyone
about this until just now. The medical staff, bound by the laws and
oaths of their profession, were forbidden from repeating anything they
had seen.

Through the ordeal, a large number of high-powered
people had been put in rather embarrassing positions by all that had
taken place, so they were more than happy to keep silent.

As was
I. Until I realized I needed to get my alcohol and drug dependence
under control. With the help of several 12-step programs and a newfound
belief in my higher power, I have come to terms with my past, part of
which is letting people know the truth about the awful events of those
3+ weeks.

Thank you to those doctors; especially Sandra Chopak.
Thank you Oprah and thank you Miss Alicia Jane Stevenson. To my family,
let me say that I am sorry I hid the truth from you for so long. I was
ashamed of who I was and that had nothing to do with me or any of you
or the fact that I had been inside an enormous woman’s vagina for over
3 weeks.

I leave you now with the words that inspired me to accept myself for who I was and all I had been through. I wish you the same.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

When I was 25, truly living on my own for the first time, I decided I was going to kill a kid.

Before you fly off the handle and call the cops, understand this: that fat bastard had it coming.

His
name was Evan and he lived next door. Evan’s parents were gone all day
so this porky loser had nothing to do all afternoon but sit on the
couch, getting fatter, playing video games and watching TV.

When he would grow bored of that, he would start looking for trouble.

Luckily
for Evan, his parents tried to make up for their absence with a lack of
discipline and an indulgent attitude. In case you can’t read between
the lines, I’m saying he was spoiled.

So Tubbs would roam the
neighborhood with his BB gun, shooting cats and younger, smaller
children and no matter how many people complained, this dipshit’s
dipshit parents wouldn’t take any action. Usually, they would defend
him and start accusing the other kids and parents of being at fault,
but sometimes they wouldn’t even do that. They clearly just didn’t
care. Someone else might feel sorry for this douchebag, but not me.

Well,
the final straw for me is when Fatty figures out that if he calls my
house when I’m at work and taunts my hyperactive yellow lab, Ellie,
over the speaker, he can make her go nuts and trash the house.

I
come home one evening and the place is a wreck. My first thought is
that I had been robbed. I’m searching around, trying to see if anything
is missing, but all I really see is someone made a mess, there’s dog
shit everywhere and no signs of entry.

Then I see my answering
machine is blinking and I have 27 messages. I push play and hear that
bag of lard’s voice calling Ellie’s name over and over and it all
clicks. Apparently, this genius was smart enough to figure out this
answering machine prank but not smart enough to realize he’d be leaving
behind the evidence to prove he did it.

I should have called the
police at this point. I had a house with hundreds, if not thousands of
dollars of damage and a tape that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt who
was responsible for it.

But, then I thought that he probably
wouldn’t be criminally prosecuted, he was only ten or whatever. The
cops would most likely leave it up to the parents to discipline their
child and I knew what that would lead to. No, it was much better to
just take the law into my own hands and murder Tons of Fun, myself.

I
had to be patient, though. I couldn’t just run over there and strangle
him and expect to get away with it. I had to think this through.

While I shoveled my now-destroyed belongings into a wheelbarrow and out to the curb, I plotted.

The next day, my plan fully sketched out, I went down to the local magic shop and bought what I needed.

I
had taken the day off from work and while I sat on the floor of my
barren living room, I laid everything out before me and waited for
nightfall.

When the sun had gone down and all the lights were
out at Evan’s house, I snuck over there, OJ-style, decked out in black,
as quiet as a cat. From my rucksack I produced a satchel which
contained 3 pieces of magic chalk I had purchased earlier.

Trying
to remember what the store owner had told me, I sketched a small door
on the side of house, maybe 3 feet high. I uttered some magic words
which I will not repeat here and then the door lit up and to my
amazement, began to open by itself. A door that opens by itself?!? What
the F???

So I got on my hands and knees and crawled through the
opening into a small tunnel. There were tiny little torches lit along
the wall and I could smell something sweet, like cotton candy. I
thought I must have lost my mind.

I followed the tunnel for
about 30 feet and figured I was directly under the middle of Evan’s
house. I marked an ‘X’ so I would be able to remember my location, when
I went back, as this was just a scouting mission. Tomorrow night, I
would return with some dynamite and blow that family of fat-asses back
to Ohio or whatever part of the Midwest “those types” come from.

I
started the fairly involved process of turning myself around when I
heard some faint singing off in the distance. I strained my eyes and
ears and concentrated down the dark tunnel and again, thought I was
losing it, when 3 or 4 tiny people approached me, smiling and waving at
me. As they got closer, I realized they weren’t actually tiny people:
they were elves.

“What’s up, dude?” the one in front asked me.

“Um, not much. What’s up with you guys?” I replied, not really able to think of anything else to say.

“Just chillin’. You wanna smoke some weed with us?”

Did
I! They whipped out their bong and we all got high as shit. I think the
cramped quarters of the tunnel served as somewhat of an airlock,
trapping us in a cloud of our own second-hand pot smoke.

When
the bong was cashed, one of the elves flipped it over and dumped the
bong water out onto the tunnel floor. It was instantly absorbed into
the dirt and seconds later, a large, bright flower grew from its spot.
The flower was taller than the elf people and as my bloodshot eyes
struggled to see in the dim torchlight, I realized that it was entirely
made out of candy. Which was pretty cool.

I followed the elves
back down the tunnel from where they had come. They told me all about
the magical land they lived in. They called it “Super Cool Dude Land”
and explained that for thousands of years, they had been the source of
the world’s candy.

“I thought candy came from England and was made out of sugar and crap like that?” I asked them, naively.

They told me that I was being stupid, which was good enough for me, cuz I was out of my mind, fucked up, at that point.

When
they asked what brought me to Super Cool Dude Land, I explained my
situation and they seemed more than eager to help me get rid of this
punk.

They laughed at my dynamite idea and explained that a
minor cave-in would never produce the catastrophic results I was
looking for. No, it would be best if they were to sneak in while Evan’s
family slept and just slit all their throats.

Their three
hundred and fifty dollar “suggested donation” sounded more than
reasonable to me, but I asked to sleep on it. They agreed and said I
could meet them back there at the same time tomorrow night with the
money if I wanted to go through with it.

I thanked them for the weed and crawled home.

My
problems were solved, my prayers had been answered. Evan would be dead
and nobody would be able to pin it on me in a million years.

So why did I feel kinda bad about the whole thing? As crazy as it sounds, I was having second thoughts.

The
next day, I asked everyone at work what I should do and my friend,
Karen, told me that if I’m hearing little voices telling me not to do
it, then I should probably give them a listen. I’ve always valued her
advice, she’s a smart lady and one hell of an office manager.

By
the time I pulled into my driveway, that night, my mind was made up: I
was going to tell the elves “thanks, but no thanks”. I hoped it
wouldn’t hurt their feelings.

I brought the 350 bucks with me,
just in case there were any hard feelings. I figured a week’s pay
wasn’t worth losing some really good friends over. I had a feeling
they’d be cool with it and tell me to keep the money. If the shoe had
been on the other foot and I had been the one offering to murder their
neighbor for three hundred and fifty dollars and they had backed out at
the last minute, I would really have appreciated if they had offered to
pay me for my trouble anyway. It seemed like the stand up thing to do.

As I reached the spot where I had made my mark the night before, I sensed something wasn’t quite right. Where was the singing?

When
the elves from Super Cool Dude Land approached me this time, there were
no smiles. As they got closer, I could see the littlest one, who I
called “Elve-us”, had been crying. He looked me in the eye and mouthed
the word, “Sorry.”

Before I could figure out what this all
meant, a charge went off behind me. Soon the small tunnel was filled
with tear gas and everything turned to chaos.

I felt my eyes
burning as I gasped for air. Strong hands were dragging me from the
tunnel, I felt the rocks on the ground tear the seat of my trousers.

Though
I could barely see, I knew I was now outside. I could feel the cool,
night air on my tear-stained cheeks. This sensation was soon joined by
that of cold steel being slapped onto my wrists. An FBI man read me my
rights.

I tried to explain that I had only showed up to tell
them I couldn’t do it, but the fact that I had the money with me didn’t
do much to convince them of my honesty.

I looked and out of the
corner of my eye, I saw a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk, my
neighbors looked on with surprise to see this pleasant young man who
kept to himself being handcuffed on the lawn of his neighbor’s yard.

I
didn’t care what they thought. What really tore at my heart was seeing
my elf buddies remove their plastic elf ears and pocket a roll of
hundred dollar bills that was doled out to them from their field agent.

I
wanted to confront them, to ask them why, but what does that really
ever get anyone? There are no answers, only more questions.

As the officer lowered my head and helped me into the back of the car, Fatso came over to taunt me.

“You
ain’t so tough now, are you, bitch? Answer me, faggot! What’s up, dude?
I’m still here! Take your best shot!” he yelled, before being
restrained by some FBI guys.

We drove away and I thought how
right Evan was. I wasn’t feeling very tough now at all. Down at the
office, they told me I was looking at 25 years to life.

They
had spent 3 years on that sting operation. 14 bureaus in counties
scattered throughout 5 different states had been in on it. But it had
all paid off in the end: they got their patsy.

Obviously, that’s
not how things ended. I’m not in jail right now. In fact, I never went
to jail at all. The DA botched the case, got caught leaking
confidential details to the media and a mistrial was called. I walked.
Scot free.

Surprisingly, I heard Evan really turned himself
around. He slimmed down, stopped being such a prick and became a doctor
or a teacher or something. He even wrote me this nice letter
apologizing for the way he had behaved as a kid and told me he didn’t
harbor any hard feelings against me for trying to kill him.

I
guess if there’s any lesson to be taken from this story it’s that you
shouldn’t go out and try to kill kids who are annoying because they
might grow up to be not fat at all, you just never know.

And also don’t ever trust magicians, because they are liars. That’s what they do: the lie to you.